American Composer Research Articles

György Ligeti: hamburgisches Konzert für Horn und Kammerorchester mit 4 obligaten Naturhörnern. Aspects of a Crystalline Microtonality

This is a study on the microtonal aspects of György Ligeti’s Hamburgisches Konzert für Horn und Kammerorchester mit 4 obligaten Naturhörnern, with special reference to its relationship with the American composer Harry Partch. The special mixture of equal temperament versus just intonation is analyzed for longer passages and adhoc chords in the concept of Ligeti. The movement “Choral” is confronted with Harry Partch’s idea of “tonality flux”. The “Hamburgisches Konzert für Horn und Kammerorchester mit 4 obligaten Naturhörnern” by György Ligeti, composed in 1998-2002, joins a long chain of exploratory forms of thought in his compositional work long years before he had pondered meloharmonics that would illuminate the great theme of tonality in a novel, personal way. In the Horn Trio (1982), melodies containing natural tones appear for the first time in the movement “Alla Marcia.” Previously, in the same work, Ligeti used the 11th harmonic as a precise quarter tone. Yet in the Horn Trio, these microtonal events are transverse to the other voices of violin and piano. Ligeti spoke of three “autists,” each living in his world of moods/tunings. In the works that followed, microtones take up an ever wider space, up to the Piano Concerto (1985-88) with 5th, 7th or 11th harmonics in trumpet, horn and trombone, and then to the Violin Concerto (1990-92), where two solo satellite strings from the orchestra, violin and viola, are retuned in natural interval relationships. The Viola Solo Sonata (1991-94) contains in the first movement “Hora lungă” a sign world new to Ligeti for natural thirds, natural sevenths and the 11th natural tone. He adopts these signs for the Hamburgisches Konzert, on which we will now focus. Keywords: Ligeti, microtonality, Hamburgisches Konzert

Contemporary music in the strategies of R. Tureck’s creative activity

Statement of the problem. Rosalyn Tureck is a significant figure in the history of twentieth-century piano art, whose multifaceted activities had a significant impact on both performance and composing. Her achievements in actualizing Bach’s music cannot be over estimated. At the same time, it was R. Tureck who did much to popularize contemporary art. The pianist’s discography contains many opuses by composers of her time, including those dedicated to her. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the study. The purpose of the study is to outline the directions of R. Tureck’s creative activity as a vivid example of the consistent and successful implementation of an actualizing performance strategy. The study is based on traditional methods of musicology (historical, genre-stylistic, systemic) as well as the method of interpretive analysis. In the research process, we used works that can be divided into 3 groups: R. Tureck’s autobiography; books on the work of American composers and those who contributed to the development of the country’s musical culture (D. Kämper, E. Z. Posell, J. W. Polisi, W. Simmons, S. Swayne, V. J. Kimberling), as well as W. J. Ton’s thesis; and comments to the CD “Premiere Performances”. The performance and structural analysis of the works on R. Tureck’s CD “Première Performances” (Two Studies for Violin and Piano by L. Dallapiccola, Concerto for Piano and Small Orchestra by W. Schuman, and Sonata No. 1 for Piano by D. Diamond), is the first such attempt in Ukrainian musicology. Results. At the time of R. Tureck’s active performing career, musical life was saturated with interesting ideas, discoveries, and new names. However, the avant-garde searches of American composers often remained unheeded by performers. In this regard, the creative activity of R. Tureck, who in 1948 created a society to popularize contemporary music, is exceptional. Her album “Première Performances” with works by contemporary composers was released in 1995. It contains recordings of premiere performances of opuses by D. Diamond, L. Dallapiccola and W. Schuman, the analysis of which is presented in the article. Conclusions. The popularization of contemporary music was an integral part of R. Tureck’s creative activity, due to which many American composers of the twentieth century got a chance to be “heard”. The basic strategies of this vector of her activity are determined: - mandatory performance of new works; - rethinking of contemporary music through previous historical periods; - direct cooperation with artists.

ANTIN RUDNYTSKY'S OPERA "ANNA YAROSLAVNA — QUEEN OF FRANCE": COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE AMERICAN AND UKRAINIAN FORMATS OF PRODUCTION

The author devotes this research to the phenomenon of the creation by Antin Rudnytskyi's the opera "Anna Yaroslavna — Queen of France", having used historiographical and iconographical sources, its artistic productions in American and Ukrainian formats. The relevance and necessity of taking into account the historical national theme in general and the opera in particular in today's socio-cultural realities are outlined. The role and place of the Ukrainian diaspora in the preservation of national identification of cultural property and artistic heritage in the conditions of stay in different countries of the world is clarified. Attention is focused on returning to the treasury of national musical culture and unjustifiably forgotten names and works of Ukrainian emigrant artists, one of their bright representatives is rightfully considered the American composer of Galician origin Antin Rudnytskyi. The literary background of the opera is analyzed and systematized being based on the peculiarities of the historical, sociocultural development of Kyivan Rus and France at the end of the early Middle Ages; the prerequisites for creating an opera are outlined, emphasizing the main storylines in the development of its dramaturgy; the author studied memoirs, reviews and publications on its production in American and Ukrainian formats. The article describes the differences in living conditions, the way of existence of Kyivan Rus and France during the specified era, emphasizing the peculiarities of their contemporary culture, lifestyle, and traditions. Attention is drawn to the choice of the effective vector of Yaroslav the Wise's activity in politics, diplomacy, interstate family ties with the leading royal courts of Europe, which contributed to the highest development of Kyivan Rus at that time, strengthening the princely secular power. On the contrary, the author emphasized the modest position of medieval fragmented France in the geopolitical development of Europe with the subordination of secular royal power to the Pope. The motivation of Antin Rudnytskyi's appeal to historical themes and the prerequisites for writing the opera "Anna Yaroslavna - Queen of France" as a "heartfelt confession" of the emigrant Maestro is determined. Two storylines in opera drama are analyzed — social-historical and domestic-psychological, with arguments for their conceptual solution. The reasons for the concertstage format of the implementation of the opera by the forces of the Ukrainian diaspora in America and the impossibility of its further stage life in the country are clarified. The conceptual production of the work in the National Opera of Ukraine in the stage format, the reasons for the shortcomings of its mise-en-scène development in connection with errors in the director's analysis and the creative idea of the performance are studied. The necessity of a thorough approach to the interpretation of historical operas of national themes with the use of large-scale monumental mass scenes is proven. Prospects for further scientific research on the given topic in the conditions of modern possibilities of musical theater and achievements of director's opera practice are predicted

Bookshelf

Abstract: Debra Greschner reviews four recent publications. The Cambridge Companion to Amy Beach , which is comprised of contributions by editor E. Douglas Bomberger and ten other authors, provides an overview of the life and music of this American composer. Patricia Caicedo offers biographical information about two South American composers in collections of their art songs. The complete works of Argentinian Irma Urteaga and a song cycle by Colombian Jaime León include phonetic transcriptions and interpretative guidance. Advice for Young Musicians by Ian Howell is a collection of counsel for music students.

Music Reviews

Abstract: This column includes reviews of a four-volume opera anthology series organized by voice type (soprano, mezzo, tenor and baritone), by American composer Jake Heggie. Also reviewed are art song settings of the poetry of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes: "Dream Variations" by American composer Mark Carlson, and "Three Dream Portraits and Three Original Songs" by Margaret Bonds; the latter appears in an edition by scholar Louise Toppin.

The genre of the piano concerto in John Adams’s work on the example of “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?”

Statement of the problem. The genre of the instrumental concerto is an important part of the famous American composer John Coolidge Adams’s oeuvre. This is evidenced by the popularity of his concertos among performers and the ongoing interest of researchers in them. However, the composer’s piano concertos, especially the Third Concerto titled “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?”, remains largely unexplored, which prevents the elucidation of the principles of interpreting the genre. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to reveal the specifics of the genre and stylistic interaction in J. Adams’s Third Piano Concerto, “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?”. For the first time the genre, stylistic, structural and dramaturgical features of this composition become the subject of analysis. The methods of structural and functional, genre and stylistic , and comparative analysis are used in the study. Research results and conclusion. The analysis of J. Adams’s Third Piano Concerto, “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?” indicates a combination of classical principles with features of minimalism and elements of jazz (ragtime, swing and other) and rock and roll. The classical principles are evident in the three-part structure of the cycle, the use of sonata form in the first movement and variation form in the second, and the orchestration that predominantly adheres to academic traditions. At the same time, there are the features of music poem genre, an openness of forms that appeal to the late-Romantic tradition, alongside with fragmentation inherited in contemporary compositional approaches. These aspects are counterbalanced by timbre dramaturgy, which embodies the idea of continuous development through the gradual addition of new instruments and registers, from the lowest to the highest. Minimalist features are evident in the repetitiveness, the significant role of ostinato rhythms, in the structure of the theme of the second movement, and the use of variation form with the addition of new episode. They also interact with baroque stylistics, as evidenced by the use of short trill-like motifs reminiscent of ornaments found in French harpsichord music. Jazz features are embodied on the genre basis of ragtime, funk, and swing as the extensive use of syncopated formulas, accents, polyrhythmic combination of parts, quasi-improvised elements and the walking bass in the piano part, as well as the ensemble techniques borrowed from jazz-bands. The inclusion in the orchestra the bass guitar and the piano sampler with “Honky Tonk” timbre refers to the rock music, to the ragtime tradition and the honky-tonk bars’ music-making. The programmatic aspect of the Concerto is realized through the stylistic interaction between the Classical embodying tradition, balance, and restraint, and the “diabolical” embodying fearlessness, freedom, and boldness associated in the Concerto with jazz, rock, and pop elements. Therefore, these aspects define the stylistic and dramaturgical uniqueness of J. Adams’s Third Piano Concerto, “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?”.

The Genre of Ballet in the Co-Creation of Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins (based on the “Fancy Free” ballet)

The article is devoted to the distinctive features of the works of the American composer Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) in the ballet genre and the tandem of the music creator and the choreographer. A signifi cant contribution to art was made by the joint work of Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins. The author of the article examines the role of music in the work of the 20th century, the stylistic features relating to this period, the history of the classical dance development in the United States of America and the importance of teamwork between two creators. The previous century was marked by the enrichment of the musical word in the ballet performances context: the orchestra becomes not only a mechanism accompanying dancers, but also a full-fl edged part of the performance. Music acquires specifi city in character and conveys the images of the heroes. In the canvas of the performance one can guess the leitmotifs related to each image, running like a red thread through the entire form of the work. “Fancy free” is a work that occupies a special place in the composer’s creative legacy. Subsequently, the musical language of “Fancy Free” can be found in Leo Bernstein’s future works – the musicals “In the City” and “West Side Story”; the author’s handwriting remained true to the style.

Music Reviews

Abstract: The work of the composers and editors reviewed in this issue include editor Louise Toppin, for the Videmus African American Art Song Series’ 47 Art Songs by Harry T. Burleigh; American composer Natalie Draper for O sea-starved, hungry sea ; and editor Alejandro Garri for Medea in Corinto , one of more than two hundred cantatas created by Baroque master Antonio Caldara for alto, violins and continuo. The column ends with a reflection on the life and work of composer and collaborative pianist Alan Louis Smith, who passed away on October 31, 2023.

АЛЕКСАНДР ЧЕРЕПНИН: РУССКО-КИТАЙСКИЙ КОМПОЗИТОР-ПИАНИСТ-ПЕДАГОГ

The article is devoted to the activities of the greatest Russian composer and pianist A. Tcherepnin, son of the famous Saint Petersburg professor N. Tcherepnin. The author traces the work of the Tcherepnin dynasty, which for almost a century and a half contributed to the development of musical art not only in Russia and China, but also in the Far East, Europe and America. A. Tcherepnin is characterised as a Russian and American composer, pianist, theorist, teacher and critic. The stages of life of an outstanding composer and musician are considered and structured. The most important innovations introduced by Professor Tcherepnin in the system of pedagogy are noted, concerning the change in the chronology of the vectors of studying Classics and Modernity, as well as the revision of the fundamental sound basis of music teaching aids and the actual creation of a new Chinese repertoire for performers. The evolution of aesthetic and stylistic views of young Chinese composers is traced: while in the 1920s the emphasis was placed on harmonious combination of the traditions of Eastern and Western music, in the following decades the interest in national roots increased significantly. A. Tcherepnin’s main thesis receives scientific analytical substantiation — to teach the Chinese to create and perform, preserving their belonging to the Chinese national tradition. The characteristic of the cycle of piano pieces “From Tcherepnin” analyses the etudes, that have a programme interpretation in a literary epigraph or in an expanded title, which is an aesthetic norm of Chinese music.

О стилистике Камерной симфонии Дж. К. Адамса

The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of the stylistic features of the Chamber Symphony by contemporary American composer John Coolidge Adams, a topic that is currently dwelt upon insufficiently. The author explores the paths of formation of the chamber symphony genre and provides examples of its manifestation in the works of 20th century Russian composers and those from other countries. The similarities and differences between Adams’ Chamber Symphony and Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1, opus 9: the specific features of instrumentation and the compositional structure are examined. The programmatic nature of the composer’s works received separate attention in the article: approaches intrinsic to the Romantic era are compared with the poetics of the titles of Adams’ composition. The author of the article pays special attention to the timbral and rhythmic features of the composition as well as its formal structure. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the specificity of the creation of the Chamber Symphony and Adams’ perspectives of the minimalist method of composition are disclosed. The influence of minimalism on Adams’ compositional style is established. On the basis of the analysis of the three movements of the cycle, the idea is substantiated that in the musical material of the Chamber Symphony, Adams managed to maintain the balance between traditional and non-traditional approaches to symphonic music.

КИТАЙСКИЙ ИНСТРУМЕНТ ЭРХУ В РОССИИ

The sound of the Chinese folk instrument erhu, which belongs to the ancient string-bow family of the Huqin family, is distinguished by a special timbre resembling a human voice. In the XXth century, especially in its second half, Chinese composers began to willingly include erhu in the orchestra with European instruments, and in various ensembles, namely: erhu — flute, erhu — harp, erhu — piano. In the last century, the tradition of creating solo compositions for the erhu began to take shape, as the blind musician Abing (Hua Yanjun, 1893–1950) wrote pieces for this instrument. He owns one of the most famous compositions for erhu — “Moon Reflected in Two Springs”. Musical pictures for erhu were created by Liu Tianhua (1895–1932, “A Beautiful Night”), Liu Wenjin (1937–2013, “Capriccio in the Sanmen Gorge”). The erhu is not widely known in the world, although it was used by such major American composers as Lou Harrison (1917–2003), Terry Riley (b. 1935), Philip Glass (b. 1937), Chinese composer Tang Dong (1923–2011). This instrument is also little known in Russia. Saint Petersburg composer Viktor Pleshak (b. 1946) was one of the first to address erhu in his vocal and symphonic triptych “Dunhuang — Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow”. Moscow composer Zuo Zhengguan (b. 1945) wrote a chamber piece “Water in the River” for an unusual composition: erhu and vibraphone. The author of the article set out to reveal the prehistory of the folklore source in Chinese art and to consider its new interpretation in Zuo Zhengguan’s composition.

«ТРИ ЧЕТВЕРТИТОНОВЫЕ ПЬЕСЫ» ЧАРЛЗА АЙВЗА: ЧЕРТЫ НОВАТОРСТВА В ТРАКТОВКЕ ФОРТЕПИАНО

The article is devoted to studying the music of one of the founders of American national music, Charles Ives (1874–1954). Charles Ives was an outstanding American composer, organist and Pulitzer Prize winner. In the context of traditional music, Ives’s piano style gains freshness and innovation through the use of modern writing techniques. On the example of Three Quarter-Tone Pieces for piano (1925), the article traces exactly how traditional and innovative compositional features are reflected in Ives’s work. In these pieces, the composer imposes a new technique of quarter-tone writing based on microtonal and microchromatic intervals. In addition to innovative compositional techniques, Ives employs traditional techniques such as symmetrical episodes, palindromes, whole-tone scales, quotations from American and French national anthems and patriotic songs. The theoretical material used for the publication is the composer’s article “Some Quarter-Tone Impressions”, an important document in which Ives gives a theoretical justification for his innovative quarter-tone system. The article was first published in March 1925 in the Franco-American Musical Society Bulletin. Ives’s article has never before been published in Russian.

Methods for Exploring Indeterminate Textuality in John Cage’s Practices of Bibliographic Encoding

The increasing ubiquity of algorithmically mediated digital texts continues to generate debate about the instability and indeterminacy of texts. The American composer John Cage is well known for disrupting traditional Western aesthetics by incorporating chance operations, algorithms, and indeterminacy into his musical compositions and literary texts. This article analyzes materials found in the pre-print archive of Cage’s printed book, M (published in 1973 by Wesleyan University Press), in order to understand how Cage brought his aesthetic of indeterminacy into print. Through analysis of archival materials, it is argued that Cage exercised control over the performance and reading of his texts, even as he ceded authorial control to the aleatory processes of the I Ching — the ancient Chinese book of divination — and to the arbitrary choices of the typesetter/printer. This article offers new understanding about algorithms and indeterminacy in the performance of bibliographic codes.
 

Isolation

The life and work of North American composer Stuart Saunders Smith (1948) have shown features reminiscent of the 19th century philosophical movement known as New England Transcendentalism. Here I discuss how ideas divulged by Transcendentalism and transcendentalist philosophies, in particular oneness, freethinking, anti-materialism, anti-technologism, and silence reflect in Smith’s life stances and compositional process. Based on a belief that oneness binds all living beings via a universal soul, Smith seeks to symbolically unify composer, performer, and audience through the use of silence and a compositional technique called co-existence. In turn, anti-materialism and anti-technologism manifest musically in his frugal use of instrumentation, and in his refusal to write for electronics while evoking naturalistic themes, respectively.

Interviews with American Composers: Barney Childs in Conversation ed. by Virginia Anderson (review)

Interviews with American Composers: Barney Childs in Conversation ed. by Virginia Anderson (review)

Sondheim from the Side

This article is a short introduction to ‘Sondheim from the Side’, the Special Issue on the late influential American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, which focuses on the reception experience of minoritarian artists and critics to his body of work. Historicizing the impetus for the collection in the wake of Sondheim’s death in November 2021, and citing a number of queer and feminist scholars on the politics of reception – including Rose Rosengard Subotnik, Jane Gallop, Eve Sedgwick, David Román and Carolyn Steedman – this article theorizes the emphasis that the collection places on critically generous, first-person articles that centre rather than occlude the author’s social location and affective experience of various works, and it links this emphasis to methods in the field of performance studies. Borrowing from Special Issue contributor Gabrielle Hoyt and Jewish rituals of mourning, the introduction also frames the collection itself as a kind of prayer, or Kaddish, for the deceased artist.

Jewish summer camp theatre and Sondheim, the Talmudic scholar

This article explores how Jewish American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, in his musical theatre works, engaged in a distinctly Jewish lyrical style that resembles a Talmudic dialectic. The author argues that Sondheim’s argumentative, self-referential, quick-moving, pitter-patter lyrics and music, a writing style that values the performance of ambivalence and repeated questioning, resembles contemporary Jewish discourse as influenced by Talmudic dialogue. The author explores Sondheim’s work through a reflection of his experience piloting a new two-week musical theatre specialty programme at Ramah Darom, a Jewish summer camp in Clayton, Georgia, in July 2023. The programme, called Ramah Bamah (bamah is a Hebrew word that translates in this context to ‘stage’), aimed to teach campers valuable performance skills from professional theatre-makers, while simultaneously encouraging campers to explore their identities as Jewish artists. Ramah Bamah presented Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods JR. as its premiere production, as programme leaders used Jewish texts, thought and values to help campers connect emotionally and thematically to Sondheim’s play-text. This article considers the relationship between Jewish text study, Jewish education, storytelling, youth/amateur theatre-making and Stephen Sondheim.

Multidimensional piano in George Crumb’s chamber music (on the example of “Makrokosmos I”)

Statement of the problem. The article considers the issues of transformation of the sound image of the piano, which is extremely relevant for the last generations of pianists-performers, which in the modern era acquires new features or develops certain qualities of its own. On the example of the American composer George Crumb’s famous meta-cycle “Makrokosmos” for solo “amplified” piano, we can clearly observe an ability of the solo instrument to creation of a virtual symbolic ensemble, the participants of which very diversity new and traditional piano timbres become. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. Despite the attention of musicologists to the figure of G. Crumb, his chamber music as a leading genre of creativity, in particular the image of the piano as the most used instrument by the composer, in all its diversity and novelty, is not analyzed in detail. The ensemble qualities of the piano in its expanded composer’s vision, as well as the principles of pianistic performance of modern music on the new “a-classical” instrument with its enriched sonorous and spatial possibilities, remain overlooked. The purpose of this article is to use the example of the first volume of G. Crumb’s meta-cycle “Makrokosmos” to reveal in the multidimensionality of the “roles” of the solo piano a new quality of “symbolic ensemble” in the context of genre typologies of music of the XX–XXI centuries, in particular based on the idea of Professor I. Polska regarding solo performance as micro-ensemble forms. A comprehensive approach to the disclosure of the stated topic is applied, combining source studies, comparative, comparative-analytical, cultural and philological research methods. Research results and conclusion. Using the example of the analysis of “Makrokosmos I” it is demonstrated that G. Crumb is far from unification in his interpretation of the piano. His “expanded piano” emphatically appeals to timbre and figurative polyphony, i.e. a multidimensional ensemble, the participants of which, in addition to the pianist himself who involves different “territories” of the piano in the musical performance (beside a keyboard, also the open strings, pedals, and corpus), are his voice, variously organized verbal replicas and whistling. Thus, in the collection of symbolic images that appear in various combinations and sequences in the 12 pieces of “Makrokosmos I”, we count up to a dozen symbolic roles-characters that build a fantastic picture where temporal and spatial dimensions intersect and interact. The rendition of such music, in addition to the performer’s mastering of its purely “technical” novelty, requires the transformation not only of the pianist’s consciousness and skills, but also of established theoretical views in the paradigm of modern genre typologies.

Music Reviews

Review of vocal music by two American composers: Scott Wheeler, “Dreams, Lies & Love Songs” and Juliana Hall, “Setting Sails,” twelve song settings of Emily Dickinson poems for soprano, mezzo, or tenor. British composer Jacques Cohen’s “Love Journey,” seven song settings for voice and piano, and for string orchestra, on poems from James Joyce’s “Chamber Music.”

Philip Hagemann—a Shavian Composer?

ABSTRACT An interview with American composer Philip Hagemann about the operatic adaptation of Bernard Shaw’s short plays with commentary by Dr. Brigitte Bogar.